Alice Grandison - Websters American English Dictionary (with pronunciation guides): With over 50,000 references (US English)

Alphabetical order

Strict alphabetical order is followed. All compound words and hyphenated words are alphabetized as if they are one word. Abbreviations and acronyms are alphabetized as if the abbreviation is a whole word.

Variations

Variant spellings appear in bold type after the headword. Other terms that are related to the headword are given at the end of an entry in bold. Inflected forms of verbs and plural forms of nouns appear in bold following the headword.

Parts of speech

Parts of speech are indicated in italic by the abbreviations shown on here.

Senses and definitions

Within entries synonyms are separated by commas or semi-colons. Different senses within parts of speech are numbered. Parts of speech are separated by full points.

Homographs

Words of different origins but with the same spelling are given separate, numbered entries.

Register

Register is indicated by labels, such as formal, informal, old. See Abbreviations on the previous page.

The aim of the pronunciation guide in this book

Unlike some languages, English spelling does not always correspond to the actual pronunciation of the word. There are many very obvious examples of this, e.g. yacht is not pronounced as it is spelled.

The aim of the pronunciation system in this book is to generate pronunciations which are easily readable using the conventions of English spelling, and which do not require an external guide or key.

To achieve this, each entry in the dictionary includes a syllable-based spelling pronunciation which provides a transparent pronunciation for the word whether the word is easy to pronounce from the spelling, e,g, bit / bit /, or where the spelling is not a good guide to the words pronunciation as with yacht / yot /.

Motivations for the approach

Research has shown that spellings which adhere as much as possible to the actual spelling of a word provide the most accessible pronunciation guide for the reader (Fraser [1996]). More relevantly, when encountering a new word, the tendency for a readerin the absence of a pronunciation guideis to produce what is known as a spelling pronunciation (Montgomery [2005]). This is a pronunciation which follows the most basic norms of the sound/spelling relationships of English. Consider how people say the name Sean if they are unaware of the correct pronunciation. Without fail, the reader will produce / seen / if they do not know it should be / shawn /.

Rather obviously, if a pronunciation is transparent (in other words, if the words spelling is a direct reflection of the pronunciation) the word is easier to pronounce without aid than a word that is not. The obvious direction is to tap into this natural want to produce a spelling pronunciation.

The problem is that many English words are not spelling pronunciations. These words require some kind of external clarification if we are to find the words correct pronunciation. In other words we cannot use the spelling on its own as a guide to the words pronunciation. So despite the obvious benefits of using conventional spelling as a pronunciation guide, all words do not lend themselves to this.

Our solution

Speech fundamentally hinges on syllables. English (and most other languages) use syllables in speech to break down words into units which can be pulsed out. Our words often have more than one syllable, with one syllable in each word more prominent than others. This is known as the stressed syllable.

To aid our readers in the pronunciation of words, we have utilized the norms of the English sound/spelling system at a syllabic level and combined this with the tendency for a speaker to naturally want to produce the most simple pronunciation of any given string of letters (a spelling pronunciation). In basic terms, we have broken down each word which does not have a transparent pronunciation into syllables which do have transparent pronunciations. For example:

earache / ee -rake/, eccentricity /ek-sen- tri -si-tee/.

In practice, this means we have produced for each word a series of syllable blocksdivided by hyphenswhich when read, reveal the pronunciation of the word. To further aid in this, the main stress is marked in bold. The result is a clear and intuitive spelling pronunciation which is based on the sound/spelling norms of the English language at a syllabic level, and which is immediately intuitive because it adheres as closely as possible to the way speech itself is streamed from usin neat syllables. Consider the following:

Thi re- zult is a clear and in- too -wi-tiv spe -ling pro-nun-see- ay -shun which is base -ste on thi sound spe -ling normz ov thi ing -glish lang -gwidge at a si- la -bic le -vel and which iz i- mee -dee-it-lee in- too -wi-tiv.

As can be noted from this passage, some words are changed, and some are not. Where the words pronunciation is transparent and cannot be made clearer, the spelling is used as the pronunciation guidewith any relevant syllabification hyphens inserted. However, due to the nature of English orthography, many words require the syllables to be regenerated as spelling pronunciations to provide a clear pronunciation. The entire system functions on the basis of spelling/pronunciation norms which it utilizes in an efficient and intuitive manner. The system is elegant in its simplicity, with the benefit that pronunciations are generated using prior linguistic knowledge, without the need for reference tables or the necessity of dealing with phonemes or symbols.

Variation

There can ultimately be no completely systematic approach in a system such as this. As such, each word is individually transcribed into the syllable-based spelling pronunciation as required. The result of this is unprecedented accuracy of pronunciation, with no new skills required from the reader since the rules of English spelling/pronunciation automatically drive the reader to the pronunciation.

Conclusion

Ultimately, English spelling is inconsistent. English pronunciations from the spellings are even more varied. Moreover, where a simple, accessible system is required for pronunciations, and where the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is not an option (as here, where children cannot be assumed to be familiar with a system such as the IPA), a system that employs syllable-based